By Reuters&bullet;
last updated:
24/11/2018

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali's army said on Saturday it had confirmed the death of Amadou Koufa, one of the most prominent jihadist leaders in the country, in a raid by French forces on Thursday night.

"I confirm that Amadou Koufa was killed during the operation," Malian army spokesman Colonel Diarran Kone told Reuters. He declined to elaborate.

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France's army had said on Friday that Koufa may have been killed in the operation in the central Mopti region that "put out of action" about 30 Islamist militants.

Koufa, a radical preacher, was one of the top deputies to Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of Mali's most prominent jihadi group, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which has repeatedly attacked soldiers and civilians in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Those attacks have shifted Mali's six-year-old Islamist insurgency from the remote desert north closer to its populous south and prompted France and the United States to deploy thousands of troops across West Africa's semi-arid region.